DETAILED ACTION
This office action is responsive to the Amendments/Request for reconsideration filed on 04/09/2026 after Non-Final filed 01/09/2026. The application contains claims 1-7, 14-26, all examined and rejected.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendment
It is acknowledged that claims 1,3, 5, 6, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25 and 26 were amended.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the amended portions of claim(s) 1, 14 and 21 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-7, 14-26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Antonopoulos et al. (US 20140181342 A1) referenced as Antonopoulos (‘342) in view of Diaconu et al. (US 12093248 B1) further in view of Antonopoulos(‘494) (US 20180121494 A1) referenced as Antonopoulos(‘494).
Regarding claim 1, Antonopoulos (‘342) discloses:
processing maintenance operations on an inverted index by a plurality of worker entities, at least by (paragraph [0003, 0005] describes resources associated with index rebuild operations being locked)
identifying a user operation that is blocked by a maintenance operation by a worker entity of the plurality of worker entities, at least by (paragraph [0026] describes a “kill” type lock request associated with a user transaction on a resource, where a grant queue is checked to see if the resource has an existing lock that cannot be granted, which identifies that the user transaction is blocked by a transaction holding a lock on the same resource, where the transaction is associated with rebuild operations described above)
and stopping the maintenance operation by the worker entity to allow the user operation to proceed, at least by (paragraph [0026] describes aborting all the transactions that are holding a conflicting lock on the resource, to allow the user transaction to attain the lock to proceed with the transaction)
But Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to specifically describe a plurality of worker entities
However, Diaconu teaches the above limitations at least by (col. 5 lines 10-36, which describes “each of the multiple discrete tasks to one or more nodes (e.g. worker entities) of the execution platform 110 to process the task”)
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) with Diaconu with the ability to “process transactions (e.g., OLTP) that may be executing concurrently, while handling conflicts and avoiding starvation of resources,” (Diaconu, col. 10 lines 63-66).
But Antonopoulos (‘342) and Diaconu further fails to specifically describe wherein the worker entity retains an operation state for use in determining whether to continue the maintenance operation after the user operation has been completed
However, Antonopoulos(‘494) teaches the above limitations at least by (paragraph 0032,0044] “persist the metadata for the new indexes to persistent storage and the options for the index build operation… At this point the operation becomes resumable… resuming a suspended index build operation… retrieve the existing index options and metadata and the starting point where the operation stopped” and paragraph [0023-0025 and table 1 and 2 further describes retained operation state resumable on/off, pause which is used to determine whether to continue the maintenance operation after the user operation has completed.)
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) and Diaconu with Antonopoulos(‘494) with the ability to persist the metadata for the new indexes to persistent storage to enable the ability to resume a suspended index build operation, resulting in improved performance for the cases where the index build was paused early, (Antonopoulos(‘494), para. 0213).
As per claim 2, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) further discloses:
wherein the user operation corresponds to a DDL (data definition language) operation, at least by (paragraph [0018] where the user transactional operation is described as DDL) and the maintenance operation correspond to a DML (data manipulation language) operation by the worker entity, at least by (paragraph [0003, 0005] describes resources associated with index rebuild operations being locked)+
But Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to specifically describe maintenance operation correspond to a DML (data manipulation language) operation.
However, Antonopoulos(‘494) teaches the above limitations at least by (paragraph 0034] “index build phase can now start and will be performed as a special INSERT . . . SELECT query. This Data Manipulation Language (DML) internally calls”)
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) and Diaconu with Antonopoulos(‘494) with the ability to persist the metadata for the new indexes to persistent storage to enable the ability to resume a suspended index build operation, resulting in improved performance for the cases where the index build was paused early, (Antonopoulos(‘494), para. 0213).
As per claim 3, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to disclose:
wherein the operating state is retained in memory and used by the worker entity to continue from where the maintenance operation stopped,
But Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to specifically describe halting/aborting in a manner wherein the worker entity retains a state for the maintenance operations
However, Antonopoulos(‘494) teaches the above limitations at least by (paragraph 0032,0044] “persist the metadata for the new indexes to persistent storage and the options for the index build operation… At this point the operation becomes resumable… resuming a suspended index build operation… retrieve the existing index options and metadata and the starting point where the operation stopped”)
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) and Diaconu with Antonopoulos(‘494) with the ability to persist the metadata for the new indexes to persistent storage to enable the ability to resume a suspended index build operation, resulting in improved performance for the cases where the index build was paused early, (Antonopoulos(‘494), para. 0213).
As per claim 4, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) further discloses:
wherein the maintenance operation is halted, at least by (paragraph [0026] describes aborting all the transactions that are holding a conflicting lock on the resource, to allow the user transaction to attain the lock to proceed with the transaction)
But Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to specifically describe halting/aborting in a manner in a manner wherein the worker entity completes work on a current maintenance phase but does not begin a new maintenance phase.
However, Diaconu teaches the above limitations at least by (col. 30 lines 65-col. 31 lines 4, which describes completing transactions associated with phase “BUILD_P1” and suspends the backfill phase (e.g. does not begin a new maintenance phase))
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) with Diaconu with the ability to “process transactions (e.g., OLTP) that may be executing concurrently, while handling conflicts and avoiding starvation of resources,” (Diaconu, col. 10 lines 63-66).
As per claim 5, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) fails to disclose:
wherein after the user operation is finished, the worker entity determines whether to restart the maintenance operations or continue from where the maintenance operations were previously stopped,
However, Diaconu teaches the above limitations at least by (col. 29 lines 50-51, describes determining whether to restart either just the validation (e.g. continue from where the maintenance operations were previously stopped) or the whole IB process (e.g. restart the maintenance operations).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Antonopoulos (‘342) with Diaconu with the ability to “process transactions (e.g., OLTP) that may be executing concurrently, while handling conflicts and avoiding starvation of resources,” (Diaconu, col. 10 lines 63-66).
As per claim 6, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) further disclose:
wherein the worker entity listens on an IPC (inter process communication) channel used to communicate to the worker entity to stop the maintenance operation, at least by (paragraph [0026] describes aborting all the transactions that are holding a conflicting lock on the resource, to allow the user transaction to attain the lock to proceed with the transaction; paragraph [0064-0066] describes instructions communicated internally between computer components which inherently listens on an IPC (inter process communication) channel, such instructions related to the aborting described)
As per claim 7, claim 1 is incorporated and Antonopoulos (‘342) further disclose:
wherein identifying the user operation that is blocked by the maintenance operation is determined based on at least whether the worker entity holds a lock on a data table that the user operation modifies, at least by (paragraph [0026] describes a “kill” type lock request associated with a user transaction on a resource, where a grant queue is checked to see if the resource has an existing lock that cannot be granted, which identifies that the user transaction is blocked by a transaction holding a lock on the same resource, where the transaction is associated with rebuild operations described above)
Claims 14-20 recite equivalent claim limitations as claims 1-7 above, except that they set forth the claimed invention as a computer program product embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium; Claims 21-26 recite equivalent claim limitations as claims 1-6 above, except that they set forth the claimed invention as a system, as such they are rejected for the same reasons as applied hereinabove.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kulkarni et al. (US 11989592 B1): Col. 124 lines 1-15.
Sawhney et al. (US 10180863 B2): Col. 7 lines 29-39.
Antonopoulos et al. "Resumable Online Index Rebuild in SQL Server": Sec. 3.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DENNIS TRUONG whose telephone number is (571)270-3157. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:30 am - 5:30 pm PT.
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/DENNIS TRUONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2152 01/07/2026
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